TAIPEI - While Beijing may not want
to see Taiwan's pro-independence Democratic
Progressive Party continue to rule the island
after 2008, the DPP emerged from last month's
mayoral elections in Taipei and Kaohsiung with
renewed hope that it might hold on to power in
next year's presidential elections. Now the race
is on to determine who will carry the party's
banner as its candidate in that key vote.

Before the mayoral elections, most saw
opposition Kuomintang (KMT) chairman Ma Ying-jeou
as a virtual shoo-in for the

presidency in 2008. He enjoys
islandwide popularity for his incorruptible image
and gentleman's demeanor, though his support has
drooped in recent months. Meanwhile, the DPP's
support levels have been tumbling as one scandal
after another has rocked President Chen
Shui-bian's administration.

But after
holding on to the mayoralty of second-largest city
Kaohsiung and doing better than expected in the
Taipei mayor's race, the DPP is more confident
that it will have a fighting chance in 2008. Ma
has already come under fire for weak leadership on
a range of issues and poor crisis management. The
vote highlighted some of Ma's political
vulnerabilities - in particular, his difficulty
connecting with voters in the south. And the DPP
now reckons it can put the more China-friendly Ma
on the defensive on the highly charged issue of
national identity and so dash his presidential
ambitions.

"We already knew Ma's approval
ratings were dropping. But after the [mayoral]
elections, we have even stronger confidence that
our candidate can beat Ma," said Winston Dang,
director of the DPP's department of international
affairs. "He's going to lose." If Dang is right,
who from the DPP would replace Chen? And how would
this affect cross-strait relations?

Taiwan's media call them the DPP's "four
superstars": the four party heavyweights most
likely to make a primary bid for the presidential
candidacy, in an islandwide vote by party members
now expected in June at the latest. But most
observers see only two credible candidates:
Premier Su Tseng-chang, who has been dubbed the
"electric fireball" for his aggressive, energetic
style, and Frank Hsieh, the party's losing
candidate in the Taipei mayoral election. Both
have broad government experience and strong
credentials as former defense lawyers for
pro-democracy activists. Notably, both are viewed
as moderates on cross-strait relations, while the
two dimmer "stars", party chairman Yu Shyi-kun and
Vice President Annette Lu, take a harder
pro-independence line.

On economics, both
Su and Hsieh are believed to favor lifting the
restriction for Taiwan-listed companies that caps
mainland-bound investment at 40% of their net
worth - the most divisive issue within the DPP. Su
initially supported lifting the cap in a key
economic conference last summer, but backed off
under pressure from a small hardline
pro-independence party that wants to tightly limit
cross-strait economic ties. And as premier, Su has
also quietly increased cross-strait charter
flights, approved the transfer by Taiwanese firms
of more advanced (though not cutting-edge) chip
technology to mainland China, and pushed to open
up the island to more tourists from the mainland.

Hsieh's stance is less clear, but
politically he may be more moderate than Su. While
Su pushes closer economic ties, he tends to talk
tough on Taiwan's political sovereignty. By
contrast, when the affable Hsieh was premier, he
pushed a line of reconciliation with the KMT-led
opposition and China, though with little effect.
And in the past he has remarked that Taiwan is
governed by a "one China" constitution - a
formulation that might help soothe nerves in
Beijing, which has insisted on acceptance of the
"one-China principle" as a condition for political
cross-strait talks.

The two men's broad
goals on cross-strait relations aren't that
different from Ma's: all three back the political
status quo (at least in the near term) and favor
warmer economic relations. But Ma is willing to be
far more accommodating to Beijing to achieve those
goals. For example, Ma embraces the convoluted
"1992 Consensus" - an unofficial agreement to
fudge the "one China" issue that allowed
cross-strait talks to proceed in the early 1990s -
and could start talks again.

Ma hopes the
shibboleth will lead to a breakthrough such as the
resumption of regular cross-strait direct flights.
The official DPP line is that no real agreement
was ever reached, so the "1992 Consensus" is a
non-starter. Su and Hsieh can be expected to toe
that line. "Saying you accepted the '1992
Consensus' would be a form of political suicide
for the [DPP] nomination," said Hsu Yung-ming, a
political analyst at Taipei's Academia Sinica.

Ma has also backed an interim cross-strait
peace pact that any DPP president would find
difficult to embrace, at least in the heat of a
presidential campaign. Ma said in an interview
last October that if elected president, he would
try to ink a deal with the mainland by 2012 under
which Taiwan would forswear formal